Page 57 of The River We Remember

At the end of the long search, except for what they’d taken from the butchering area, they had nothing.

“What do you think, Brody?” Asa said as they stood in the tiny living room, looking around a final time.

“I don’t know,” Brody said. “Connie?”

“We’re not wrong,” Graff said. “It was Bluestone, I know it. We just…” He turned in a full circle, then shook his head. “We just missed something, somehow.”

“What?” Brody said. “Where?”

“I don’t know,” Graff said. “Maybe there’ll be something on those items we pulled from the slaughter room. And I’d like to know exactly when that pig was butchered.”

Brody said, “Let’s go see what Mrs. Bluestone has to say.”

Outside, they found the woman and the kid talking amiably on the wrought-iron bench as if they were old friends or longtime neighbors. It was late afternoon by then. A breeze had come in across the fields, and a line of clouds had gathered along the horizon far to the west. It felt to Brody like a storm might be brewing. The woman watched the officers approach, and there seemed a calmness about her that was not at all what Graff had described in relating his visit with her the night before.

“May I ask you a few questions, Mrs. Bluestone?” Brody said.

She nodded.

“She likes Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis,” the kid threw in. “She’s all right, Sheriff.”

“Thanks, Douglas. I appreciate the input. Asa, would you escort our young miscreant to the cruiser?”

“Come on, kid,” Asa said.

Douglas rose and said to the woman, “Thank you for the lemonade, Kyoko.”

She smiled. “You’re welcome, Douglas.”

The dogs had bounded away. Hector was using his nose to investigate the acreage, sniffing the perimeter of the house, trotting about the yard, moving farther and farther afield. Brody knew Hector would stay within earshot and didn’t worry. The Bluestones’ old dog kept him company.

“Mrs. Bluestone,” Brody began, “that freezer in your garage is full of hog meat. Did your husband do the butchering?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me when?”

She hesitated. “Last week sometime.”

“Can you recall exactly when?”

She breathed twice. “Thursday.”

“All right,” Brody said, as if it meant nothing, though Quinn was killed that same night. “When my deputy visited you, he asked you a couple of questions that you never answered. I’d like answers now.”

She waited, her face lifted from where she sat on the bench so that she could look at Brody’s face.

“Did James Quinn ever visit when you were here alone?”

She stared into his eyes. Was it defiance he saw there?

“Yes,” she said.

“What was the nature of his visits?”

“Sometimes he was looking for my husband. Sometimes he just seemed lost.”

“Lost? James Quinn drank, Mrs. Bluestone, sometimes heavily, and he sometimes took a drug to help him sleep. It made him wander, get himself lost. Is that what happened?”